Small businesses have a massive potential for growth. If you own one, read on to explore these technologies. From Chatbots to IoT, incorporate them to witness improved customer experience.
Customer service is becoming the new trademark of success in businesses. The new technologies in customer service and support are predicting the success of any business. The progress of technologies like real-time messaging, video, Artificial Intelligence (AI), chatbots, and self-service have changed the way we looked at customer service. Already have technological advancements in Spectrum internet that help in remote support and control changed the face of the business world.
Incorporating these new and advanced technologies the small businesses, in particular, can revolutionize the customer experience.
Top 10 Technologies to Revolutionize the Customer Experience
- Video Communication
- Real-Time Messaging
- Chatbots
- IoT- Internet of Things
- Wearable Tech
- Connection-as-a-Service
- Blockchain
- Security Technologies
- Smart Payments
- Artificial Intelligence/Machine Learning
Let’s explore.
Video Communication
Real-time audio conversations are largely a thing of the past. In businesses, eye contact and face-to-face conversations are a powerful and convincing mode of communication. Companies, which are using video voicemail or video conference are almost a generation ahead. Video provides a medium similar to face-to-face interaction. It encourages openness and improves relationships.
Therefore, video is a viable tool for business improvement. Especially for small business setups. Also, consumers are expecting video communication and involvement in face-to-face meetings whenever possible.
Real-Time Messaging
Isn’t email dead already? Almost. Long live chats! Modern customers expect you to be readily available whenever they want to interact with you. Most of them, especially Millennials, prefer interacting via chat instead of email and phone. For instance, is 100 Mbps good bandwidth? A Millennial would prefer asking this question on some live chat forum instead of making the effort of calling their ISP’s customer support.
Facebook Messenger is another instance. It has proved to be a good place where you can interact with businesses in real-time. This kind of real-time interaction is expected by other mediums of communication too.
All the chats and on-site conversations are expected to be authentic and one on one. That’s a huge milestone from a snail email and then waiting for an email in response for hours or maybe days. You need to perk up your communication strategies in you want to succeed. And you can still share important documents via email.
Chatbots
Chatbots have become a popular mode of communication. Every time you communicate with any brand or even if you want to know about
spectrum cable pay per view, you will receive an automated message similar to this:
“Hi, my name is Jason. How can I help you?”
Doesn’t it sound familiar? With 24/7 customer care, chatbots give you the opportunity to give your customers full-time support. And you don’t have to maintain full-time staff and spend on doing so. Business Insider enlightens that by 2020, more than 85 percent of the customer interactions are going to be managed via chatbots. That means, without a human being involved. Customers seem to enjoy their problems being solved with the help of bots. Many use services like live Chat for their businesses
IoT- Internet of Things
Do you know that in the year 2016 alone, people spent a massive amount of 157 billion dollars on gadgets, which connected to the internet in some way? Security systems, thermostats, wired, and wireless cars are some instances. Consumers are demanding more and more devices, which receive and upload data. The predictions are showing around a 24% increase in connected devices annually. Many TV service providers like Spectrum TV are using the application of IoT to improve their customer experience.
Security experts have their concerns regarding cyber criminal abuses of new gadgets. If you are in trade and manufacturing, work on the security concerns. That’s how your customers can count on you without having any security concerns. Hence, improving customer loyalty.
Wearable Tech
Are you looking for a crisp and productive strategy to make your employees more engaged and enthusiastic? Or, you want them to reach out to your customers readily? Wearable tech can help you here. Fitbit, Samsung Smartwatches, or Apple Watch will change the way that your employees communicate with your customers. Some giant names, such as Amazon, are using GPS trackers already. Their warehouse workers use them to improve efficiency. You can expand marketing channels and improve efficiency too by making your workers wear these devices.
Connection-as-a-Service
You already know how big brands like Uber, Amazon, and Airbnb have managed to build online empires. They simply provided a way for the sellers and buyers to connect. In the jargon of Silicon Valley, that’s known as “connection-as-a-service” or “people commerce.” And that’s exactly how these startups now receive a nice 25 percent fee. Consider coming up with a practical and catchy business idea. And use this technology for your benefit.
Blockchain
Do you know that the technology that makes cryptocurrency transactions independently and instantaneously verifiable is also coming for small businesses? Spread across private or public computers. Blockchain is actually a network. It stores all the real-time records of various transactions between companies or people. Since the transaction record is easily available to people in the network, committing fraud is almost impossible. And this technology has a huge network, the transactions actually work much faster than transactions via banks.
Security Technologies
Security breaches have become a common story. As much as the technologies are advancing, the hackers are also getting good at security breaches. Small businesses and retailers need to really work hard on protecting the privacy of their valued customers in years to come. Both customers and businesses have the risk of having their intellectual property and identity stolen. Small businesses should particularly work on keeping customer information secure. The prevalence of cloud technologies to share sensitive documents and information is also becoming a massive threat.
Smart Payments
Bitcoin has been trending but all consumers are not ready to switch their assets over to cryptocurrencies. They still feel safe with digital payments and use services like, Google Wallet, Apple Pay, Coin, and so on. Mobile payments are on the rise and they are expected to rise further.
Small businesses may not be able to afford this technology. Android and Apple are developing incentives for their customers to make payments using their tech.
Artificial Intelligence/Machine Learning
It might sound futuristic, but Artificial Intelligence has been affecting our interactions with various tools on computers for a while now. Take the instance of Gmail. Its spam filter makes use of a robust algorithm. It sorts and identifies messages based on the content. It learns to identify the messages over time, which use odd messages or syntax. Or, those which come from strange, unidentified email addresses. It marks such messages as spam automatically. Machine learning actually keeps your inboxes spam-free.
Companies like TeamViewer further refined this futuristic technology. With their solutions like Blizz collaboration, IoT, and Pilot, small businesses have the opportunity to rev up their performance.
